


The Whole Naked Boat Thing

by jujubiest



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Jacob Phelps - Freeform, Karakurt, Liz in hiding, The Whole Naked Boat Thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:33:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3930091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>After the comment Tom/Jacob made in "Karakurt," and with the way the season finale looks to be shaping up, I'm wondering if Liz will have to go into hiding and if maybe Jacob will go with her. So then this happened.</p><p>(I also kinda wonder if something exactly like this didn't happen to Red to originally make him become a criminal.)</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Whole Naked Boat Thing

**Author's Note:**

> After the comment Tom/Jacob made in "Karakurt," and with the way the season finale looks to be shaping up, I'm wondering if Liz will have to go into hiding and if maybe Jacob will go with her. So then this happened.
> 
> (I also kinda wonder if something exactly like this didn't happen to Red to originally make him become a criminal.)

When they were married, they used to sleep in on Saturdays. Tom and Elizabeth Keen were bedbugs, rolling out of bed thirty minutes after their alarms went off every morning, rushing around to get ready on time fueled by coffee and late-riser panic. Now, they wake up before dawn every morning.

Liz doesn’t sleep deeply anymore, or for long. She hasn’t had an eight-hour night since she came home to find her husband tied to a chair and bleeding to death. Her nights are short and light and often fitful, usually ending in giving up and making herself a cup of terrible instant coffee, getting ready to start the day.

No matter how ungodly the hour, somehow Jacob is always awake before she is. She feels it the moment she opens her eyes, every morning: his breathing may be slow and even, but there’s a tense watchfulness to his body, draped gently next to hers, arms barely touching.

Tom and Elizabeth Keen were cuddlers. Jacob and Liz share their narrow bed like awkward teenagers at a sleepover, shifting restlessly but afraid to roll toward or away, unsure what to do with their limbs. Liz likes having him there, just within reach. Not that she would ever give him the satisfaction of saying so.

A part of her hopes he knows. A part of her wonders if he feels the same. A part of her–a big part, some leftover Elizabeth-part that grows larger by the day in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the peaceful white noise of the ocean–wishes she could make herself roll over on her side, curl into his shoulder and sleep for ten hours straight, without dreaming.

But the point of all this was to get away from everything, and for Liz that includes the illusion of Thomas Keen and the part of her that trusted him without hesitation.

She calls him Jacob, like he asked. Not for the reasons he probably hoped. She wants the reminder– _needs_ the reminder–that this man is not who he said he was. That he’s not her sweet, gentle, guileless husband.

Liz has it figured out, finally. She’s found a way to mourn him without forgiving him, a way to love who she thought he was without her anger getting in the way every time.

Jacob is a doppelganger, an evil twin. Thomas Keen died of his stab wounds in the hospital. He never came home. Jacob took his place. Jacob lied to her. Jacob abused her trust. Thomas Keen was a teacher, a husband. He wanted to be a father, raise a child with her. Jacob Phelps was an agent, and she was his job.

Elizabeth Keen would have psychoanalyzed the shit out of that.

Liz shifts and sits up, letting the sheet fall away and feeling only barely self-conscious at the feel of her naked skin against the air. She never used to sleep naked, but here it’s too hot to do otherwise, even if she weren’t sharing a tiny bed with a human space heater.

She grabs a dress–when’s the last time she wore a dress in either of her other lives?–from the cabin’s little closet and slips it over her head. It falls around her, simple and almost shapeless, thin brown material that feels odd swishing around her bare thighs. Even the few times she dressed up for some covert op with Reddington, she wore stockings underneath. She never used to like feeling this exposed.

She looks back at Jacob, pretending to still be asleep, and allows herself the smallest of smiles before slipping barefoot out of the cabin and climbing the short ladder to the deck.

The gleaming surface of the boat is just beginning to wash pale orange-pink with the light of sunrise. The ocean air is cool against her skin. She shivers and heads for the rack that holds two folding chairs and the trunk full of scratchy, salt-and-sand-filled blankets. The material rasps against her skin as she pulls the blanket around her shoulders, holding it awkwardly with one hand as she unfolds the chair with the other. Curling herself under the blanket, she faces the coming sun and lets her thoughts drift in the pre-morning quiet, allowing herself to feel a measure of peace.

When Jacob emerges a few minutes later, he finds her fast asleep in the chair. He goes back down into the cabin, grabs a pillow, and tucks it carefully behind her head. She miraculously doesn’t wake up.

He smiles. They won’t be near enough to make port anywhere for several hours. He’ll let her sleep a little longer.


End file.
